In the manufacture of shoes of high quality it has long been the custom to apply to an element of a shoe upper, such as a quarter, a strip of leather folded over the upper margin and secured in place by a line or lines of stitching. The binding strip conceals the raw edge of the leather upper and imparts a pleasing finish. However, leather is a difficult material to manipulate, since it is not by any means uniform in its characteristics.
Hitherto it has not been possible to provide a binding strip which can be folded over the margin of an element of a shoe upper and stitched in place without exhibiting relatively unsightly wrinkles. Some improvement was achieved by the process disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,045,463 granted July 24, 1962 to J. D. Hopkins. That patent discloses a method in which the strip is folded to present overlapping marginal portions which are in turn subjected to progressive rolling pressure. This pressure evidently breaks some of the fibers of the leather to render it more pliable than would otherwise be the case. However, although the Hopkins method did constitute an improvement, it was still not possible to produce a binding strip which would be completely free of wrinkles, particularly in areas where the binding strip must turn a corner or follow a curve in the margin of the upper element being bound.